Despite the dominance of Donald Trump, the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential election are very crowded. More than a dozen candidates have registered to start the race for the White House, although many do not have the slightest chance. Of them, there are eight that have exceeded the minimum standards required for voting intentions and donations from supporters to participate in the debate. All but Trump will fight this Wednesday for nearly two hours in a debate broadcast on Fox News.
The Fiserv Forum pavilion, where Giannis Antetokoumpo’s Milwaukee Bucks play, in the center of the city, will be the stage where the dialectical battle will take place. These are the candidates who will participate:
Ron DeSantis
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is Trump’s main rival in the primaries, but a long way from the former president. Aged 44, married and the father of three children, he seemed the great promise of the Republicans after his overwhelming success in the re-election as governor in November 2020. But he delayed his entry into the race, his campaign started badly and he has been getting worse His first act was a botched Twitter forum with the eccentric Elon Musk that was totally marred by technical problems. The Trump campaign laid out the negative publicity artillery on DeSantis to prevent him from taking off and, aided by the governor’s missteps, he has succeeded.
DeSantis has failed to find the tone of the campaign. He is torn between defending Trump for the allegations or criticizing him, while the former president mocks him for even changing the way he pronounces his name. His latest blunder has been to criticize not Trump, but his supporters, suggesting that they are a herd blindly following his leader. The problem is that he needs the votes of a good part of them if he wants to achieve the nomination.
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His strategy was to point out that Trump has no chance of winning against Joe Biden due to the rejection he provokes among moderate and independent voters. He points to him as a loser for his 2020 defeat and the poor results of the 2022 legislatures and presents himself as a contrast for his wide victory in Florida, a state that was previously evenly matched between Democrats and Republicans. However, he himself is very conservative and causes suspicion among moderate voters. In addition, his campaign errors have taken their toll. The distance has widened and he even begins to jeopardize the second position in the primaries. According to the average of large surveys calculated by FiveThirtyEight, their intention to vote is 15.2%, compared to 52.5% for Trump.
In case something was missing to ruin the tone with which he arrives at the debate, the New York Times has unveiled campaign strategy documents, including one with recommendations for debate: “1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. Present the positive vision of the DRG [gobernador Ron DeSantis] 2-3 times. 3. Defeating Vivek Ramaswamy in a reply. 4. Defending the absentee Donald Trump in response to an attack by Chris Christie. Will it stick to the script?
Mike Pence
Mike Pence, 64, was a loyal Trump vice president throughout his presidency until the boss asked him to break the law and subvert election results to prevent Joe Biden’s presidential victory from being certified by Congress. At that decisive moment, Pence preferred to be loyal to the Constitution. The Trumpists have not forgiven him.
Pence says his differences with Trump go far beyond what happened the day of the Capitol storming. He is a traditional conservative, evangelical, anti-abortionist, whose convictions contrast with the former president’s moral relativism.
The former vice president is both a rival of Trump and a witness in one of the cases for which he is charged. He tried to refuse to testify, but in the end he had to do it and the prosecutor has also had access to the notes he took about the pressure he received from his boss to annul the elections.
Pence has struggled even to qualify for the debate because of few contributions from supporters. In the polls of the Republican primaries, it is located somewhat below 5% in voting intention.
Vivek Ramaswamy
It is the main surprise of the Republican primaries. Vivek Ramaswamy, 38, the son of Indian immigrants, presents himself as a kind of millennial Trump, a billionaire businessman, successful biotech investor, lover of the free market and scourge of ideology. woke, of the progressive ideas on climate change, diversity, equality that he fights. He is against corporate social responsibility, which he considers perverted by its ideological charge. And with his talk, his money and his defense of Trump above all else, he has been gaining ground in the polls. He’s at 9.2%, according to the FiveThirtyEight average, so he’s clearly ahead of Pence and close to DeSantis. He does not bite his tongue, so he is expected to be one of the entertainers of the debate.
nikki haley
Trump’s former UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is among those who strongly believe the GOP should turn the page on Trumpism, but she is also very cautious in her criticism of the former president. She was one of the first to take the step and at the beginning of her campaign she made noise by asking for a cognitive ability test for candidates over 75 (read Biden and Trump). The star presenter of CNN’s mornings said that she, at 51, was no longer in the prime of her life. Between that and her low ratings he ended up getting fired from her.
Haley, the only woman of the eight candidates, has not been able to get off the ground. She has a 3.5% vote intention among the Republican bases, according to the average of the polls. Like Ramaswamy, she is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her original name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She adopted the middle and last names of her husband, military man Michael Haley.
chris christie
In the 2016 campaign, Chris Christie, a 60-year-old former New Jersey governor, was helping Trump prepare for the debates, after leaving his own campaign. Now, he will be the most critical voice with the former president in the Fox debate. He has called Trump a “coward” for not attending, but above all he openly questions the former president.
The candidate broke with Trump after his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 elections. He believes that the former president has kidnapped the Republican Party due to his megalomania and personal interests. “I am running because he has let us down,” Christie said recently at a political event for an influential evangelical group. “He has let us down because he is not willing to take responsibility for any of the mistakes made, for any of his shortcomings and for any of the things he has done. That is not leadership. That is a leadership failure,” he added. That position is not very popular in the party. He was booed and has a 3.5% voting intention.
Tim Scott
The only black senator from the Republican Party, Tim Scott, 57, enjoys a brilliant oratory. He is a deeply religious and conservative candidate, who often quotes the Bible in campaign rallies and has spoken out in favor of a federal law that prohibits abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy (in Spain, the deadline law allows abortion in the first 14 weeks of gestation without any other requirement).
A senator from South Carolina, he is the grandson of a worker in the cotton fields of the deep South of the United States. He sells his personal story of success and overcoming—he was raised by a divorced mother who worked long hours as a nursing assistant to support him and his brother—as supposed proof that in his country there is no racism that prevents those who strive to prosper. . He has only 3.4% voting intention.
Asa Hutchinson
It will be, with Christie, the other voice in the debate that is most decidedly critical of Trump. He has been the last to meet the requirements to enter the debate, but he only has a 0.7% voting intention. The former governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, 72, believes that nominating Trump would be a big mistake that would end up serving the Democrats the re-election of Biden.
“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again (…) Donald Trump is running to stay out of jail,” he said at a recent campaign rally in Iowa. He was booed over and over again .
Doug Burgum
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum pulled out the checkbook to get enough donations to get into the debate. He offered 50,000 $20 gift cards to those who donated $1 to easily exceed the minimum of 40,000 contributions required.
Burgum, a 67-year-old billionaire, swept the election for governor of North Dakota, a clearly Republican state but largely unknown in the rest of the country. His presence in the campaign is testimonial. The average of the polls gives him a 0.4% voting intention.
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